gray birch

American  

noun

1. a small, bushy birch, Betula populifolia, of stony or sandy areas of the eastern U.S., having grayish-white bark and triangular leaves.

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Etymology

Origin of gray birch

An Americanism dating back to 1850–55

Example Sentences

Every one can see at a glance the appropriateness of such terms as pale primrose, gray birch, and narrow bower.

From The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 Volume 23, Number 1 by Various

He carried a plain walking-stick of gray birch with a single large opal for a grip.

From Tales of the Jazz Age by Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott)

The shining boles of the silvery gray birch shot up straight, and the white birch unrolled its patches of dead pallor in the sombre, untrodden depths.

From Gala-days by Hamilton, Gail

Into the brown furrows troop the goldenrod and asters, the wild grasses and brambles making a first shelter for the seeds of gray birch and wild cherry that magically come and plant themselves.

From Old Plymouth Trails by Packard, Winthrop

Besides this, there is the white, or little gray, birch, which is seldom over twenty-five or thirty feet high.

From Among the Trees at Elmridge by Church, Ella Rodman